“About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today” • Hacker News Board

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#911

Post by thu2111 » Sat, May 01, 2021, 2:15 PM UTC

mortehu wrote: post #376

dbt00 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If more than a third of your employees think that a single policy change is enough for them to leave, then maybe your policy change is dumb.

This is confounded by the fact that they were also offered money to leave. I suspect the results would have been different if they paid 6 months of salary to the ones who stayed instead.

Yeah. That's pretty hard for me to understand. Why did they make that offer? Paying people to quit without any kind of bounds on how many may take the offer seems like a crazy business decision. They made a decision. They announced it to their staff. Anyone not on board would have been fired anyway, so where's the need for the payout? IIRC Coinbase made the same offer and it just seems like the kind of weakness that led to their problems in the first place. A company pays employees to do work, not to not do work.

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#912

Post by specialist » Sat, May 01, 2021, 2:25 PM UTC

baron816 wrote: post #181

What I think is lost in the conversation here is that people don’t really have organizations they can go to to advocate their political positions. People have their families, their jobs, and maybe a couple of friends and that’s about it. They need an outlet to push the ideas and causes they care about. The workplace is one of the few places where they can feel like they’re having an impact, but that’s not really appr…

FYI, There's a zillion local orgs for political parties, policy, advocacy, volunteering, etc. But since they're mostly volunteer run, they're mostly discovered word of mouth.

I tried twice to start a study group based on the book Becoming a Citizen Activist. Focus more on the how, vs the what. I haven't yet figured out how to make it self-sustaining. I'm not sure it's possible.

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#913

Post by thu2111 » Sat, May 01, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

faitswulff wrote: post #259

So all the free speech maximalists are here in force, right? …right?

Which free speech activists have been advocating that employees shouldn't have to do work when they're at work? None, because believing that isn't a part of free speech rights, and Basecamp made it clear they didn't care what employees said off company time, so it's an irrelevant strawman.

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#914

Post by ryanbrunner » Sat, May 01, 2021, 2:29 PM UTC

Quarrelsome wrote: post #651

throw14082020 wrote: post #433

I spent a lot of time reading about this... TLDR: Basecamp had a list of funny names which originated a long time ago. You can imagine that certain ethnicities have names which sound funnier than a common name, so these names go on the list. Some people think its racist, others don't. These people who don't think its racist still admit its rude/ unprofessional though, just not racist . Anyway, there was too much poli…

FWIW, DHH stated that only a handful of names were Asian. The vast majority of names on the list were English or Nordic. :|

I don't see why the percentage is super significant. If the reason they are on the list had to do with their ethnicity, it's still bad and something that should absolutely be addressed.

Like 90% of the runtime of old racist Disney movies are fine and don't contain racial stereotypes, but that doesn't absolve the remaining 10% in any way, and if the movie was twice as long, the 5% of remaining insensitive content wouldn't be more justified.

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#915

Post by twobitshifter » Sat, May 01, 2021, 2:29 PM UTC

JauntTrooper wrote: post #28

They offered a severance of 6 months salary if you've worked there for 3+ years... I would be tempted by that offer regardless of any other circumstances, especially in today's competitive jobs market.

For the people who stay when one third of the team has left what’s your outlook?

Pro: high possibility of promotion and a new position

Con: way more responsibility and stress for managing a platform and rebuilding teams on the fly.

I think they’ll need to offer some form of compensation to reward the people who stayed on, because their lives will likely get a lot harder in the short term.

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#916

Post by throw123123123 » Sat, May 01, 2021, 2:36 PM UTC

NathanKP wrote: post #671

christophilus wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I see a Jehovah’s Witness coming up to my door, I pretend to not be home. I’d really hate to be forced to have that same feeling at work, but be unable to escape it. If you can’t do your job without evangelizing your coworkers in some form or fashion, maybe you should reconsider your career choices.

You are halfway there, but now think a bit further. Imagine if you were working at a job, but you are stuck with immature coworkers that are making fun of aspects of your culture, making fun of names that are similar to your own name, or similar to names of your friends and family. You can't escape these immature people because you need to work the job with them in order to make money. So you deal with it for a while…

> but you are stuck with immature coworkers that are making fun of aspects of your culture, making fun of names that are similar to your own name, or similar to names of your friends and family

That is resolved with the manager, and if not, with hr.

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#917

Post by throw123123123 » Sat, May 01, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

8note wrote: post #704

christophilus wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I see a Jehovah’s Witness coming up to my door, I pretend to not be home. I’d really hate to be forced to have that same feeling at work, but be unable to escape it. If you can’t do your job without evangelizing your coworkers in some form or fashion, maybe you should reconsider your career choices.

What are the other options for people to push political opinions nowadays? Corporations are the power brokers today

Anywhere else. A company can't be the political voice of its employees without taking it away.

Employees doing activism through the company are not doing activism, they are delegating it at seemingly no cost to them.

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#918

Post by dbattaglia » Sat, May 01, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

In fall 2008 I moved from Long Island to New Hampshire (for family reasons) and found a job in a small niche B2B shop doing C# Windows apps. On my first day of work, I notice the receptionist desk has a stack of McCain/Palin 2008 bumper stickers. The next couple of months were filled with employees talking non-stop about the election, from their deeply conservative point of view. Being quite progressive left-leaning this was pretty frustrating and distracting to listen to while I tried to just get some work done. They all seemed to believe Obama would send people to their door to take away their guns and assault rifles, and somehow also turn us into the Soviet Union.

The thing is, these weren't bad people. They took a chance on an self-taught programmer / art-school dropout in their late 20s with 1 year of professional experience, and they treated me well. When I moved back to New York (for other dramatic family reasons), the CEO offered for me to stay at their own house. I just didn't agree with their political opinions. I think for most folks working in tech hubs its just the other way around, where they are in a left-leaning bubble and its hard to imagine another POV. Coming from someone who was on the outside, I can say for me it was at best distracting and at worst alienating, and I can see why companies want to put an end to it.

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#919

Post by toyg » Sat, May 01, 2021, 3:07 PM UTC

yerwhat01010 wrote: post #833

HNfriend234 wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are non-profit organizations or similar private organizations that are better suited for political activity. The workplace is not the correct place. I was also harassed by the "silence is complicit" attitude. Some other employees I work with would go up to me and ask me questions like "we want to know where you stand on xyz political issue".....and I'm like.....it is really none of your business. They then take…

> Some other employees I work with would go up to me and ask me questions like "we want to know where you stand on xyz political issue".....and I'm like.....it is really none of your business. They then take that response as you "being part of the problem" and then start going after you personally. These people are totalitarians.

Yeah, this is textbook totalitarianism. People think totalitarianism is about dictatorship, but it isn’t: it’s about public policy dominating every part of one’s being, removing any personal or private space.

Forcing people to declare for this or that cause is absolutely totalitarian. It can be done with the best of intentions, but it’s still a unhealthy way of going about things.

Re: “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

#920

Post by crazydoggers » Sat, May 01, 2021, 3:10 PM UTC

This is definitely a younger generation issue. The idea that the workplace should be a platform for activism just make no sense. It’s one thing to require your company to have certain ethical standards, that they follow the law, that they don’t descriminate, that they don’t have a culture of sexual harassment, etc.

But this is not about that (base camp already seems to be a positive work environment). So to assume you can use the companies resources for your own activism just comes across as entitled. It’s a disconnect with the other 99% of the workforce.. many of which are forced to pee in bottles to make their paychecks. The bubble of privilege these employees live in, and their blindness to it makes them look bad.

From the companies perspective, in a healthy democracy we are going to disagree. And there’s a time and a place for those disagreements. And the company can’t start to wade into those arguments. I can only imagine what trying to manage employees with differing viewpoints is like if they feel like they can both bring those views front and center to the office.

So I know I would be unlikely to hire these employees unless the did some growing up.